


Never Again

by spockachu



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 04:05:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1674038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spockachu/pseuds/spockachu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long experience has taught Arthur exactly how long it takes for a pyre to be built.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Again

Arthur stirs slowly. His headache is made worse by the steady sounds of hammering working their way in through the open window.

He opens his eyes, and immediately closes them as the midmorning light makes his head hurt even more. Merlin must have forgotten to close the shutters last night, and Arthur resolves to chastise him when he deigns to show up.

He opens his eyes once more, more slowly this time. There seems to be entirely too much light in the room, considering no one has come in to wake him. His stomach rumbles loudly, and he's in the midst of deciding if it's worth it to try to sit up when there's a knock on the door. Gwen (not Merlin, why not Merlin), carrying breakfast and what look like some of Gaius's concoctions, enters before he can muster an answer, and starts when she sees him awake. Arthur is surprised to see tears in her red-rimmed eyes.

\---

Long experience has taught Arthur exactly how long it takes for a pyre to be built.

\---

He's pushing himself too hard, has been told so by Morgana and Gwen and Gaius, but. Do they expect him to sit and watch?

He's done that too many times, already. No more.

\---

He bypasses the audience chamber entirely. He has no illusions about his chances to convince his father to change his mind. His ways are set in stone, and stone cannot be bent, only broken.

\---

Two guards rush past him as he approaches the dungeon stairs, yelling as they run towards his father that the sorcerer has escaped.

He's glad to see them run by. They are brave, the pair of them, loyal to Uther if not to Camelot. He'd have hated to have to waste time by killing them.

\---

There are many cells in the dungeons of Camelot, but the only one that had been occupied until recently was easy to spot. A hole had been punched in the wall near the top, and unnaturally-smooth stairs led up to it. Approaching them, Arthur finds that they radiate heat. He hopes the rest of his trail is as easy to follow.

\---

Emerging into the light, he spots his quarry right away.

Merlin is standing a few yards away, looking dirty and disheveled and so completely uncowed that Arthur almost laughs, thinking that his father believed he could keep him chained in a dungeon, that a mortal king could ever hold him.

Arthur can't quite fathom the look Merlin is giving him. He doesn't allow that to stop him.

He walks until he and Merlin are a foot apart, and holds out the staff Gaius had finally told him about after much cajoling (ordering) (threatening). Merlin takes it, hand unwavering, and while drawing his sword Arthur asks a question he never would of anyone else:

"Where do we start?"

**Author's Note:**

> Vaguely inspired by Nickelback's "Never Again".


End file.
